Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/389



pestilence, as the Tribunal of Health had feared, did enter the Milanese with the German troops. It is also known that it was not limited to that territory, but that it spread over and desolated a great part of Italy. Our story requires us, at present, to relate the principal circumstances of this great calamity, as far as it affected the Milanese, and principally the city of Milan itself, for the chroniclers of the period confine their relations chiefly to this place. At the same time we cannot avoid giving a general though brief sketch of an event in the history of our country more talked of than understood.

Many partial narratives written at the time are still extant; but these convey but an imperfect view of the subject, historically speaking. It is true they serve to illustrate and confirm one another, and furnish materials for a history; but the history is still wanting. Strange to say, no writer has hitherto attempted to reduce them to order, and exhibit all the various events, public and private acts, causes and conjectures, relative to this calamity, in a concatenated series. Ripamonti's narrative, though far more ample than any other, is still very defective. We shall, therefore, attempt, in the following pages, to present the reader with a succinct, but accurate and continuous, statement of this fatal scourge.

In all the line of country which had been over-run by the army, dead bodies had been found in the houses, as well as on the roads. Soon after, throughout the whole country, entire families were attacked with violent disorders, accompanied with unusual symptoms, which the aged only remembered to have seen at the time of the plague, which, fifty-three years before, had desolated a great part of Italy, and principally the Milanese, where it was and still is known by the name of the Plague of San Carlo. It derives this appellation from the noble, beneficent, and